SuperManager: Equal Pay and Gender Bias – Part 2 (Overcoming Bias)
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Christine: You’re listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business. With ideas, friends, and expert interviews to help you be a SuperManager.
Sam: Welcome back to part two of our conversation about equal pay and gender bias. I have got my totally equal super friends with me.
Gerry: I’m Gerry Richardson. I’m a lawyer at Evans and Dixon. I work with employers. I help them manage their relationships through the courtship, the marriage and the divorce.
Joel: Joel Emery with Ignites Strategies. I serve as a sales systems architect for small and midsized businesses.
Vicki: Vicki Wors, Wors Consulting. I am a human resources consultant for small to midsize businesses, helping them maneuver through some of the uncomfortable issues they face.
Amy: I’m Amy Narishkin. I’m a cultural intelligence strategist with Empowering Partners, which is actually my business, so I’m a consultant as well, and I help organizations reach broader markets by hiring people that they think are different.
Sam: And I am Samantha Naes with CN video. We do corporate video production. Gerry, it sounds like you’ve got an equal pay story for us
Gerry: Of recent note, probably the most interesting one would be the U S women’s soccer team. Who won the World Cup.
Amy: Hello!
Gerry: You have the men’s team, which has never won the World’s Cup. But from a lawyer standpoint, it’s kind of an interesting question. They are different teams and they don’t play the same opposition. They play different teams. And so the question is does that make a difference? Now I think the allegations and perhaps some of the evidence favors the women’s team in that, well in terms of what women are paid, they’re paid like about half, I think they’re getting paid around a hundred thousand and the males are 230,000 those are averages and in terms.
Amy: And that’s before all the sponsors.
Gerry: Well, no, but when you, but then you look at, okay, well what are the revenues that these teams are.
Sam: That’s what I was gonna say, that’s a tough one. It’s gotta be based on revenue too.
Gerry: Well but wait but wait a minute, but, but wait a minute. Because the woman’s team, because it’s been so good, draws larger audiences and more diverse so that.
Sam: Well, now I didn’t realize that.
Gerry: because of the larger audiences, they’re actually generating more money than the men’s team.
Sam: Oh
Gerry: and they end up on TV much, much more than the men’s team.
Amy: The irony
Sam: Okay. Well, I can’t defend that.
Gerry: So that, but that’s not always the case.
Amy: Right
Sam: Right.
Gerry: So if you’re comparing the NBA to the WNBA,
Sam: Right
Gerry: that’s way different.
Amy: Right, right.
Vicki: Well I think it has to get down to income generation. If one particular team, whether they are male or female, are they generating with regard to profits or
Sam: Well like in sales, it would be based on sales.
Gerry: But let’s take gender out of it. That’s a little harsh, because you take a league like the NFL. There’s revenue sharing going on because if I have a team in New York, it will generate a lot more advertising revenue than if I have a team in St. Louis or Kansas City or…
Amy: Market share.
Gerry: Yeah, yeah. Well it was just revenues are just based how many eyeballs are going to watch it.
Amy: Right.
Gerry: And so if you’re in an area where there’s a lot more eyeballs, and that’s why the NFL has been such a success because early on they decided to do revenue sharing. So small market teams then get a share of all the revenues from the advertising and they can afford to get expensive players. So it’s not, the Yankees scenario was the Yankees always had more money and the way that Major League Baseball is set up, they didn’t have salary caps and things like that. And so other leagues have gone about it in a different way because they want more competitive games.
Sam: I think what we’re talking about though mostly is just gender bias, discrimination and lack of equal pay in the workplace where you don’t have as many people watching women’s basketball as you do watching men’s basketball. You have a group of computer programmers where the company says, we’re on a budget, therefore we hire women.
Gerry: What I’m saying is you have to look at more than just the pay differential. That’s a good place to start. There’s a pay differential.
Sam: Right.
Gerry: But is there an explanation that’s non-discriminatory because the law allows non-discriminatory explanations to trump a difference in pay in terms of does, it require the same skills, efforts and responsibilities? Perhaps it does, but is there some other nondiscriminatory reason that explains it? Well, if there is an income generation that’s present for one gender, that’s not for another. Yes, that explains it. So.
Amy: What’s your saying kind of triggers, I’m feeling angry. Because taking gender out of it, as I sit with this anger, I’m just realizing that unless you’re aware of your bias, the bias is going to influence your actions. I just want to be careful about just saying the words, taking gender out of it. We can take gender out of it. I remember for example, a pastor telling me that he hires based on merit and what I wanted to challenge him, but it wasn’t the time, was to realize that merit is based on how you’re enculturated. So you think somebody is valuable based on your experience. So if all you’ve known is one kind of person as valuable, that’s who you’re going to gravitate toward. So when for example, a white male CEO said to me recently, there just aren’t people of color to fill positions in my company, well for people of color, when they hear that, that just irks them to no end because all of the experience of this white male CEO, he’s not exposed to people that are of different color.
Sam: Right.
Amy: And so the folks of color will say, I’m thinking about engineering societies and historically black colleges, and women’s engineering association. If we’re going to overcome bias and really hire people based on merit, we’re going to have to kind of double down and really look for people that have diverse backgrounds.
Sam: Gerry …
Gerry: So you should go to my blog from about two months ago.
Amy: Oh, I’d love to.
Gerry: That was exactly about what do you do with those in the context of tight labor markets, where do you find the talent? You fish where the, where the fish are. And you find them and then you expand your pool.
Amy: Awesome.
Sam: Gerry, I have to say though, when you were, when you were talking about about before, when you were talking about going back and taking gender out of it and examining other reasons. What was going through my mind as I was listening to you was, okay, so you’ve got gender bias that you may or may not be aware of, and what Gerry’s talking about is essentially justifying it. Going back and finding ways to justify why this person is making less than this person other than gender. And that’s kind of what I was, I don’t know if …
Joel: Let me interject an observation, I mean there’s two different ways of weighing that. I think Gerry was talking about it from a very legalistic legal precedent perspective.
Sam: Right.
Joel: And then there’s an ethical human dialogue too. And those are not necessarily the same conversation. They can be at times, but they are not necessarily the same. So I think Gerry was trying to articulate what is legal based in case law or regulations precedent. And I think, well other parts of the conversation are more going on values. And that’s some of the things like that…
Vicki: That’s one of the big differences between Gerry, in a legally trained mind and say me as a human resources professional. You have the law and following the tenants of the law, what is appropriate, what is right as far as ethically and morally are concerned. And sometimes they don’t…
Amy: Jive?
Vicki: They don’t jive! And in human resources over the years that I’ve been involved, I don’t know how many times I have argued salaries with CFOs, CEOs, why are we paying him more than her? He’s married, he has a family. She’s single.
Amy: Ouch…
Vicki: Okay. So it’s like, Okay… And myself, I had an experience, I got laid off. Why? Because I was a college graduate and I was single and I could find another job, but they kept all the men.
Gerry: You have to look at things. The market values janitors at a different rate than it values investment bankers. And so there’s, you can’t say, well there is a female janitor and she’s getting paid $9 an hour and there’s this investment banker who’s male that’s making 250 a year.
Sam: I don’t think that’s what anybody’s comparing though…
Vicki: I was the department manager!
Gerry: Well, well no, that’s taking gender. No, no, no, you’re, you’re, you’re taking you have to take gender out. There are things such as the market that value different things and that’s why the law, at least until now, a few states are moving in a different direction, but has said there is no comparable worth theory. Comparable worth was something litigated in the 90s and it ended up being rejected by the courts, but it was saying, well, gee, here’s a job classification where predominantly females are in it, in the same employer. Here’s a job classification with predominantly males. They say the males are paid more, so they’re roughly doing the same thing or something similar. You get people with undergraduate degrees, they don’t have to have say masters and above to start. Well one might be highly technical and the technical fields were paid more and another one might be you could put anyone in there with any college degree as a starting. That’s a significant difference and so that comparable worth theory was rejected. As I said, there were a few States change. I think California is.
Sam: I think the, the issue I’m having with this conversation is I feel like the problem and can we all agree that there’s a problem?
Vicki: Well certainly.
Sam: is that this may not be a… and Gerry’s kind of looking “Eh, I don’t know.”
Gerry: That’s, that’s way too broad because there are many employers I have worked with, they have a essentially a system for pay grades and the way that it’s done, gender doesn’t really matter and you can study and you do studies.
Sam: Well those are the companies that are doing it right.
Vicki: You give me a broadband compensation structure. You give me a compensation structure that, Oh wow, women take just tend to be down at the lower end, but we have a broad band. Okay, well bite me. Okay.
Sam: No, what I was gonna say is.
Vicki: It’s like okay. The reality of it is, in what I have worked with in the past, I understand what you’re saying about engineering and technical. Okay. I am saying all things being equal. Okay. That over a period of time it’s absolutely beyond me and hopefully it’s getting better. I haven’t had to deal with the compensation issues in some of my consulting, thank God anyway, but the idea is that the mindset was number one, you hire a divorced woman with children that she has to work. You can work or as many hours as you want and pay or whatever you want and if you get mean, this was the mindset because she has to work. She has children, so this was where a lot of women got into the workforce, but they get stuck at a level because we can’t do without you, we can’t promote you. Who else is going to do that crap job you had?
Sam: I think the point that I was going to make about what concerns me about this conversation and first of all, Gerry, thank you for throwing yourself in the middle of this. But I feel like this is less of a legal issue and more of a cultural intelligence issue. I think that laws can only go so far. Even if you made, and this is like in a fictitious world, you made a law that said a female counterpart has to be paid exactly the same amount as a male counterpart. There are going to be work arounds, there are going to be people that disagree with it. They’re going to be problems and issues. It’s more a change of the mindset. It’s people realizing this, what did you call it? Unconscious…
Amy: Unconscious bias.
Sam: Unconscious bias. It’s more people actually realizing that and changing the way people think and the way they feel and less about changing the laws and that’s just kinda my opinion.
Gerry: I disagree because before Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964 there was rampant discrimination throughout the economy. That was enacted, 64, if you look around now, there is much less discrimination. I’m not going to say it’s gone entirely away, but much less discrimination. I think that’s a fine example where the Americans with Disabilities Act, same thing of you can legislate morality
Sam: But there’s a time for law and there’s a time for
Vicki: Except what are you basing that on? Number of times, Number of lawsuits brought, is that what you’re basing it on?
Gerry: There were no laws, before 64 there were no lawsuits,
Vicki: OK, so
Gerry: there was no law that required equal trades.
Amy: We talk about the number of CEOs in America, there are more CEOs named John than there are female CEOs in the United States. I’m not sure discrimination is… gone.
Gerry: Before 1964 there were no female CEOs.
Sam: Right.
Gerry: Okay, so what I’m saying,
Amy: So we can count the number of …
Sam: The laws were necessary then, and we have some laws in place now, but now it’s becoming more mindset.
Gerry: Beware of those statistics, because I think those are only publicly traded corporations,
Amy: They are.
Gerry: so closely held, there are many more and there are many more females and so we get snippets of information and we broadly generalize with statistics that aren’t accurate broadly, and that happens frequently.
Vicki: Well, and there is a prime example of cultural bias sitting in the White House.
Sam: Why whatever do you mean?
Vicki: You had, you had a very qualified,
Sam: This is about to get really heated really quick I think.
Vicki: okay, you had a very qualified candidate, very much a what we’d call lightning rod. Okay. Admittedly, a lot of people had issues, but what was the comment? There’s not going to be a woman president in the United States of America. Hopefully that will change. But the cultural bias that says a woman is too emotional to handle being president of the United States. That is the cultural bias.
Gerry: Okay. But wait a minute. We’ve had, and still do have, women who serve on the United States Supreme court. We have women that have been Secretary of State. We have women throughout the legislature’s. So I guess I go through.
Vicki: But they cannot become, president.
Sam: What did they have to go through to get there, though?
Gerry: I don’t think Hillary, no, Hillary Clinton didn’t lose because of her gender. She did not run a smart campaign and I voted for Hillary Clinton. Okay. But she did not run a smart campaign.
Vicki: But again, look what you’ve got.
Gerry: Okay. But you’re attributing that to gender. And you have a lot of people I think that had grievances with this vague system and that they as individuals were being done in by the system and so they voted for this anti-establishment character, Donald Trump, because he said he’s an insider and he can figure it out and turn it on its head. That’s really what he’s done, isn’t it?
Vicki: Yeah. Last 50 nuclear in Syria.
Sam: He dropped it on it’s head is I think what it…
Vicki: Okay, but aside, I shouldn’t have put the political thing in there, but I did out of just absolute frustration, but the issue, having been in employment, I’ve consulted for the last 13 years, but in the workplace and being in the cat bird seat, being over the compensation structure, over hiring, over the whole enchilada, let’s say, okay. What you’ve seen is that you saw the bias and what you would see so often would be a guy come in and interview that a particular manager or an executive really found attractive. I’m saying he liked the way the guy looked. He liked the fact that he was over six foot tall, there’s a bias for you. He liked the fact that he came from the same college, yada, yada. All the way down. What happens is those guys are then looked at through that CEOs vision as their young self and they live through their young self. It doesn’t matter if this guy can’t even find their way out of a box.
Sam: I had a friend recently who lost her job because the CEO’s wife didn’t want her husband working with this woman.
Vicki: I got news for that happens quite a lot too.
Sam: Yep, because she’s pretty.
Gerry: That’s been litigated too.
Sam: Alright, well that seems like a good place to wrap up part two of our conversation on equal pay and gender bias, but before we go, anybody have a good horror story?
Sam: If not, I’ve got one.
Sam: I actually worked in a work environment one time where I had a male counterpart. We both had the same title, the same job, just very similar departments. And I was approached about coming across too bossy, too overbearing and mostly in email messages. And so we did an experiment where we switched whenever I sent out an email to my department, I had him, I had him type up the email and send it under my name and whenever he needed to email his department, he had me type it up and send it under his name. And we did this for a couple of weeks and then I asked have I improved? And they said no, if anything you’ve gotten worse. And I said, well what about him? And they said, he’s fine. Nobody has a problem with him.
Joel: Funny.
Sam: Now, at one point they had somebody come in to do, I think it was the Myers Briggs, they did personality testing and I was told, and I quote “Sam, your problem is that you’re an ENTP and the N T combination is predominantly male.” And so people expect you…
Amy: That’s your problem.
Sam: That’s my problem. Yeah. And so people have a certain expectation.
Amy: That’s so sad.
Amy: For women …
Sam: for me to behave differently because they’re not used to seeing the N T combination in a female and that I needed to be aware of that. What kind of struck me?
Amy: And please stifle it.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please act more female because I’m making people uncomfortable.
Amy: Ouch.
Christine: Thanks for listening to SuperManager by CN Video Production. Visit our website cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of SuperManager resources, or give us a call at (314) VIDEO ME.